Hillary Struggled with Wall Street and 9/11, But She Still Won the Debate

There are two options: The option of war might seem a priori to be the swiftest. But let us not forget that having won the war, one has to build peace. Let us not delude ourselves; this will be long and difficult because it will be necessary to preserve Iraq's unity and restore stability in a lasting way in a country and region harshly affected by the intrusion of force. Faced with such perspectives, there is an alternative in the inspections which allow us to move forward day by day with the effective and peaceful disarmament of Iraq. In the end is that choice not the most sure and most rapid?

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– Dominique de Villepin, Foreign Minister of France to the United Nations General Assembly, February 14, 2003.

DES MOINES—Just thought we all needed a reminder of how right the French were in 2003, and how prescient, and how they were mocked and derided for knowing more about the use of force in Iraq than the cowboys in the Avignon Presidency, and the suckers in the Congress who voted for the war, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton. We need it more than we did Saturday, even, because the same sort of folks who brought us "freedom fries" and derided the French as cheese-eating layabouts as recently as last month—Hi, Jeb (!)—are now fitting themselves for berets, and waving baguettes towards Mecca in a menacing manner. Not that they aren't singing some of the old standards, too. N. Leroy Gingrich, definer of Civilization's rules and leader (perhaps) of the civilizing forces, called the president "presumably Christian" on TV Saturday. Meanwhile, that complete dog's breakfast, Tailgunner Ted Cruz, provided this contribution to the national dialogue.

"I recognize that Barack Obama does not wish to defend this country. He may have been tired of war, but our enemies are not tired of killing us," Cruz said in a Fox and Friends interview. "They are getting stronger. Every region on Earth has gotten worse under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy."

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I can see that the level of some of the public discussion on this very important topic is going to be conducted at a level slightly below that of a mating conflict between Komodo dragon lizards, just as it was in 2001 and in 2003. As long as we all stipulate to that, I suppose the presidential election can proceed.

OK, so now about the debate.

The silly scooplet of how the Sanders people may have complained about a shift in the debate plans aside, there was some real substantive disagreement between the three Democratic candidates, albeit some of it felt a little cobwebby. (I, too, would like to see a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act passed by the Congress, but one of these three should have paused for a moment to explain things to the people watching at home unfamiliar with New Deal banking legislation.) The change in the format forced the three candidates to address foreign policy and national security right at the top of the debate. Moderator John Dickerson, freed from his day job filling the chair once occupied by former Tigranes the Great environmental correspondent Bob Schieffer, kept them on topic for the first half-hour of the debate. And, slightly to my surprise, Bernie Sanders was not reluctant to draw a line back from the chaos in Paris, through the misbegotten adventure in Iraq, to that vote back in 2003 that still hangs around the neck of HRC.

Well, in fact, I would argue that the disastrous invasion of Iraq, something that I strongly opposed, has unraveled the region completely. And led to the rise of Al Qaeda—and to—ISIS. Now, in fact, what we have got to do—and I think there is widespread agreement here—'cause the United States cannot do it alone. What we need to do is lead an international coalition which includes—very significantly—nations in that region are gonna have to fight and defend their way of life… Oh I don't think any—I don't think any sensible person would disagree that the invasion of Iraq led to the massive level of instability we are seeing right now. I think that was one of the worst foreign policy plunders in the modern history of United States.

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For a moment, HRC was wrong-footed and, I suspect, curious about whether or not there was a statute of limitations on such things. She tried to broaden the context into the difficulty of solving the problem of terrorism generally.

I think it's important we put this in historic context. United States has unfortunately been victimized by terrorism going back decades. In the 1980s it was in Beirut, Lebanon under President Reagan's administration and 258 Americans, marines, embassy personnel and others were—murdered. We also had attacks on two of our embassies in—Tanzania and Kenya—when my husband was president. Again, Americans murdered. And then of course 9/11 happened which happened before there was an invasion of Iraq. I have said the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. But I think if we're ever gonna really tackle the problems posed by jihadi extreme terrorism we need to understand it and realize that it had—ans—and (UNINTEL) to what happened in Iraq and we have to continue to be vigilant about it.

Or, more to the point, she seemed puzzled as to whether or not the answer to that question applied to some votes, and not to others. (Later in the debate, she tried the same tactic on Sanders's having voted to allow gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits if their products are misused.) For me, anyway, there are votes and then there are votes. There remains more than a whiff of careerism in that 2003 vote to go to war that makes her subsequent admission of a "mistake" a little less of an atonement than it should be. Nevertheless, the first 35 minutes were taken up by proposals about how the United States should respond to what is rapidly becoming the perceived existential threat posed by ISIS. The issue was thoroughly explored, and the discussion was blessedly devoid of bombast and of actual bombs, which was another reason to thank Baal that there wasn't a Republican debate this weekend.

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Which led us to the night's supremely weird moment. It came during a vigorous Sanders attack on HRC's ties to the Wall Street financial community, and to that community's apparent enthusiasm to make heavy proposition bets on an HRC presidency.

Here's the story. I mean, you know, let's not be naive about it. Why do—why over her political career has Wall Street a major—the major—campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? You know, maybe they're dumb and they don't know what they're gonna get. But I don't think so. Here is the major issue when we talk about Wall Street, it ain't complicated. You got six financial institutions today that have assets of 56 per—equivalent to 50—six percent of the GDP in America. They issue two thirds of the credit cards and one third of the mortgages. If Teddy Roosevelt, the good Republican, were alive today you know what he'd say? "Break them up. Reestablish (APPLAUSE) (UNINTEL) like Teddy Roosevelt (UNINTEL) that is leadership. So I am the only candidate up here that doesn't have a super PAC. I'm not asking Wall Street or the billionaires for money. I will break up these banks, support community banks and credit unions—credit unions. That's the future of banking in America. I have never heard a candidate, never, who's received huge amounts of money from oil, from coal, from Wall Street, from the military industrial complex, not one candidate, go, "OH, these—these campaign contributions will not influence me. I'm gonna be independent." Now, why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something. Everybody knows that. Once again, I am running a campaign differently than any other candidate. We are relying on small campaign donors, 750,000 and $30 apiece. That's who I'm indebted to.

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At which point, HRC lost a bit of her smooth.

You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, I am very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60 percent. (APPLAUSE) So I—I represented New York. And I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy. And it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.

I remain at a loss to understand how, if we hadn't allowed the banksters and their allies to develop elaborate fraudulent financial instruments to steal most of the country's wealth, the terrorists would have won. I realize that they had to have their buildings rebuilt in order to conduct their business, and their crimes, and I realize that, as senator from New York, HRC had an obligation to constituent service in that rebuilding, but her answer was flatly bizarre, and it allowed Sanders to point out that,

With all due respect to the secretary, Wall Street played by the rules? Who are we kidding? The business model of Wall Street is fraud. That's what it is.

However, for all the strange overshadowing and the clear difference that was drawn between HRC and the other two candidates, it's hard to see Saturday night's debate as moving the needle dramatically in any direction. (And, once again, Martin O'Malley had a strong night that likely will mean less than zero in the polls. For some reason, the people who don't like Martin O'Malley really don't like Martin O'Malley. I don't see the slickness edging toward smarm that so aggravates many people.)

HRC did what she had to do, which essentially was not make any obvious gaffes and to counterpunch effectively which, after a rough start, she did well. If the game has changed in any way, it is devoutly to be hoped that it changed in that people in the country will assess the new threat posed by the Paris attacks and decide whether they want to govern themselves through politicians willing to engage in serious arguments about policies, or through politicians willing to make fear dance on a string to old and noxious tunes. I make that even money either way.